" The only real pang he felt in leaving arose from the "silent
grief" of his Aunt Porten, whom he did not hope to see again. Nor did
he. He started on September 15, 1783, slept at Dover, was flattered
with the hope of making Calais harbour by the same tide in "three
hours and a half, as the wind was brisk and fair," but was driven into
Boulogne. He had not a symptom of seasickness. Then he went on by easy
stages through Aire, Bethune, Douay, Cambray, St. Quentin, La Fere,
Laon, Rheims, Chalons, St. Dizier, Langres, Besancon, and arrived at
Lausanne on the 27th. The inns he found more agreeable to the palate
than to the sight or the smell. At Langres he had an excellent bed
about six feet high from the ground. He beguiled the time with Homer
and Clarendon, talking with his servant, Caplin, and his dog Muff, and
sometimes with the French postilions, and he found them the least
rational of the animals mentioned.
He reached his journey's end, to alight amid a number of minor
troubles, which to a less easy tempered man would have been real
annoyances. He found that Deyverdun had reckoned without his host, or
rather his tenant, and that they could not have possession of the
house for several months, so he had to take lodgings.
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